I know why YOU think it can't be true. However, not all of the Shroud was exposed to such high temperatures for a long enough period. There are qualitative changes that occur to Linen when it is heated that hot.
I am also aware that Rogers cannot prove a negative... that there is no vanillin on the Shroud... because you would have to look at every possible location and exclude vanillin being located there. However, there is a database of fiber samples taken from every square inch of the shroud and a statistically significant portion have been assayed and show no vanillin.
Rogers got his threads from Gonella who he says claimed to have taken them from the center of the C-14 testing area.
This is NOT a criminal case, Soliton. No further photomicrographs are needed. There are thousands of threads on the Shroud that have NOT been photomicrographed. I bet you have never seen a photomicrograph of your Riggi Sample. I saw one once but cannot find it now. The photo you provided of the Arizona sample is sufficient to show that there are visible changes in the weave from one area to the next. Your demand that there must be a "chain of custody" for the scientific research to be valid is absurd.
Rogers requested threads from Gonella, the scientific advisor to the Custodian of the Shroud. Gonella sent him threads. Both men agree this was done. Rogers reports he did his research using those threads as well as threads from the Raes sample. Why do YOU have a problem with it as though your life were hanging on the technicality that a photomicrograph was not taken at the time of collection? There is no "Smoking gun" here for you to worry to death. It is a non-issue except to YOU.
“There are qualitative changes that occur to Linen when it is heated that hot.”
I’m no deep researcher on this like you guys. But two things to consider:
1. Even at our current technological level, we may not be able to fully conceive what exactly happened to that piece of cloth.
2. Do we know how skilled they were at hoaxes way back when?
This is quite a mystery, isn’t it?
NO! Gonella wasn't the scientific adviser to anyone at the time. He was acting as a private citizen. Riggi, Gonella's assistant, was also not involved officially and neither was Rogers. This was their own little fraudulent show. Rogers states specifically that the warp and woof threads were supplied by Gonella, and Rogers, ONLY Rogers, claimed that they came from "the center of the c14 sample area. The Turin custodian does not accept Rogers' findings
As mentioned repeatedly before. Turin officials requested that ALL non-1978 samples be returned to the Turin in 1995 . They REFUSED to authenticate the sample provided by Riggi to Garza that led to the "bioplastic film" nonsense. McCrone said that the threads had definitely NOT come from the shroud.
Riggi worked for Gonella. They were the goofs that simplified the protocol for testing the samples for c-14 testing. The new flawed Gonella-Riggi protocol was lambasted by the testing labs and others, but they were in charge. They were publicly disgraced when the C-14 came back with a medieval date. Gonella was furious and accused the British Museum team as "acting like dogs". I can find no record of him being a Turin official after 1989.
To this day Turin has refused to validate Rogers' TA work. Gonella was either peddling fake threads or was in possession of stolen property.
NO! Rogers claimed that there was NO vanillin on the shroud. He also claimed to be able to determine an age range for the shroud (1300 t0 3000 years old). He in essence used the slow depletion of vanillin in lignin as an hour glass. Once the flax was cut, the vanillin began to dissipate. He calculated that it would take a minimum of 1300 years for all of the vanillin to be completely depleted so it was "unlikely" that the shroud was younger.
If you accept his vanillin aging theory, then the shroud is older than approximately 1300 years. Unfortunately for Rogers, he did what pseudo-scientists frequently do--He overreached by saying that the shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old.
If you walk into a room and find an hourglass with all of the sand in the bottom, you can reasonably conclude that the hour glass was turned over more than an hour ago, but unless you know when the last grain of sand slipped to the bottom, you cannot say WHEN the glass was turned over. If it had some sand in it, you could give a range of less than one hour and greater than some time ago. If all of the sand is in the bottom of the hourglass, however, you cannot set a range.
Rogers states that the vanillin glass was empty. All of the vanillin had been depleted at some unknown time in the past. If that time was 1 AD. His dubious analysis would provide an age range 1300 to 3000 B.C.! He simply assumed the vanillin ran out the minute before he did his tests. His tests actually have a range of 1300 to whenever flax evolved-- tens of thousands of years. Real peer review would have caught such an obvious mistake.
Could you point me to some documentation on this database? I have read 13 books and untold articles on the shroud in the last month or so and can find no mention of it. Was it created during the modern restoration?